The statement is misusing words, in that rewards make you happy by definition. This is a typical postmodern statement, trying to reorganize deep rooted cognitive structures, with words, which is completely backwards.
Great, now I got flagged. Someone is trying to regulate my words, because they feel uncomfortable. Funny I just predicted exactly that. The comment became recursive. Just like the self-fulfilling recursive personality structure of a narcissist.
> Lives get better through many factors. Better knowledge. Better medicine. Better education. Better products. Greater shared wealth. And, ideally, better regulation.
Who pays for that? You don't sound like you're an active participant in producing any of that stuff. You sound like you're just an advocate for "more" regulation. How does that help? Don't you agree that bad regulations do more damage than a single bad actor? Like in Soviet Union?
Or it could just be that you're the bad actor in disguise, or you don't realise it yourself. Don't get me wrong here, but your mindset sounds like that of a young child, who wants to control everything, by "regulating" others' behaviour.
Although you don't seem to understand the real reason you're living a "better" life: Someone (you or others) pays for it. Lives don't get better by regulation, they get better by hard work. The real reason smoking are less is because nice hard working people reach a consensus that smoking is bad. Not a genius that imposes regulation on smoking. Actually, if you don't offer alternatives for a nicotine addict (like a good life), regulation only makes them resentful and anti-social. So get your priorities straight.
Regulations really don't work when you're dealing with adults. Anti-social behaviors cannot be regulated. That's actually the point of being anti-social.
Throughout history, every time you start to count on regulations, the whole thing falls apart pretty quickly. LOOK ELSEWHERE. We didn't have this much regulations 30 years ago and things were great.